Moving into the twentieth century, scholars began to challenge the notions of culture that had prevailed in the nineteenth century. Though they happened slowly, there were two significant changes. Firstly, culture came to be seen less in the singular and more in the plural. This meant that there was not necessarily one predetermined course of […]

Some feminist scholars of science have suggested that those challenging the “objectivity” of scientific knowledge in order to effect a feminist transformation of science are caught up in the wrong kind of argument—one revolving around how accurately we ‘represent’ an external world. One notable alternative approach to the study of science is pragmatism, a philosophy […]

Scholars have recently come to acknowledge the (intentional and unintentional) shaping of  American social science in line with white interests, that has led histories of social science to display a notable absence of scholarship by writers of color. One extraordinary gap in the history is the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, a pragmatist […]

The notion of science’s impartiality is that of a method that constructs, accepts, and rejects theories based purely on their relations to evidence, without the interference of values. Much of feminist theorizing on science suggests that taking an explicitly and self-consciously feminist approach to scientific methodology will lead to an improvement in science. But where […]

In the nation-building, wars, and industrialization after the French Revolution, an enthusiasm for natural scientific methodology developed among intellectual and political elites. Scientific subjects experienced a growth of prestige in educational establishments, which had previously been based on classical education. While the social context gave rise to new problems of crime, disease, poverty, and prostitution, […]

An important strand of feminist science studies takes the form of highlighting the  contributions of women throughout the history of science, and the social and political reasons they have not been recognized. This lecture will consider the “hidden figures” of science—i.e. talented women who have been excluded, marginalized, or plagiarized in the history of science, […]

During the institutionalization of the discipline of sociology in the early 20th century, we see the segregation and exclusion of women in the form of a division of sociological labor. Men were expected and encouraged to become professors and deal with abstract ideas and theories, while women’s roles lay in testing and putting these ideas […]

The traditional understanding of science is that of a value-free process of knowledge-acquisition which guarantees objectivity in its results. Value-free can have many meanings, all of which are habitually claimed for science: (1) a process autonomous from the workings, influence, and direction of society, (2) a set of neutral knowledge that does not serve any […]